


Fall Away

by NKMLN



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Blood, Body Horror, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Ghost(s), Gen, Horror, Prosthetic Limbs, This is a horror fic now, on GOD, on GOD these men will be tender
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:01:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29176863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NKMLN/pseuds/NKMLN
Summary: Darth Vader dies. Anakin Skywalker, in all his guilty iterations, joins the Force.Obi-wan comes to find him.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 5
Kudos: 35





	Fall Away

When he dies, Anakin Skywalker closes his eyes, and does not expect to open them again. He sinks into the dark- light, untouched- and just… stops.

  
The universe keeps moving. He cloaks himself with the space between the stars and does not move with it.

* * *

Obi-wan strokes the razors edge between the two halves of the Force, looking for any flaw, any scratch in the border where something could hide. He can feel Palpatine surging against the walls of his cage, here and dead and gone already, but he does not pay him any mind. He does not care what happens to him now. Let him rot. He keeps searching.  
  


(There is a great black room, and even now it feels sharp and painful, and even now it smells of blood, but if he turns his head, the room goes white, and he can hear, still, the screams of the newborns who could not possibly understand what was happening-)  
  
Anakin is perched on the operating table, clothed in Jedi robes with his hands trembling and dripping red, clothed in a darkness so absolute that it fills his lungs and pulls his breath into painful accordance. His eyes are fixed to an empty point in space. He tears at his arms with his nails, staining the ivory robe, ineffectively creasing the dark fabric.

 _It doesn’t come off,_ Obi-wan hears in two voices. _It won’t come off._

He cannot bring himself to approach the man wreathed in darkness, but he takes one of Anakin’s bloody hands between his own. His palms turn slick with it. He can hear screaming. These voices know what is coming, and they are afraid.

Anakin trembles. Obi-wan does not let go.

(There is a great expanse of sand, like a sea gone dry, and the heat reflects in an infinite cascade of mirrored suns and drought and desolation-)

Anakin stands in the center, his metal limbs rusted and clogged with sand, and still he tries to move, although he does not know where. He is terrified. He is hurt. He- he-

Obi-wan does not wait to hear him this time. He picks him up and sits down with him in the sand, feels Anakin curl closer and produce a sound like a sob as he finally reaches something real.

He holds him until the planet turns to ice and their bodies go too cold to rot, and it is not long enough.  
  
(There is a great and terrible place, and the screaming is so loud now, and he cannot breathe-)

Anakin moves past him on the blackened shore, eyes glassy, breath trembling. He does not deviate from his path as Obi-wan joins him.  
  
The waves bring in the bodies. Anakin watches.

“You should go,” he says. His voice is hoarse. “I need to finish this.”

Obi-wan stays silent.  
  
“I need to finish,” he says again. Smoke curls off of his form.

The shore does not end. The tide is coming in.

Obi-wan takes his hand and leads him away from the fire. Anakin does not resist.

(There is nothing. There is them and the Force and nothing.)  
  
The nothing does not obliterate. It does not destroy. This darkness holds no evil, no ill intent. It just is.

Anakin watches it. His eyes are his own again. They are filled with hunger.

“You can rest,” Obi-wan tells him. “It’s over now. You came back to us.”

Anakin turns his gaze to him. “But I left.”

Obi-wan does not look away.

Anakin moves closer. “Why would it let me come back?”

He has a million answers. He has no idea.

Closer. “Why-“

His voice cracks. Obi-wan wraps him in his arms and feels him begin to cry.

“I don’t know,” he murmurs. “But we have time to learn.”

“It doesn’t come off.”

The nothing whispers. The blood on his hands does not disappear. His prison shroud does not vanish.

But they do become lighter.

“Then I will help you bear it,” Obi-wan tells him, “until it comes away.”

Anakin does not respond. His breath trembles. The nothing curls around them.

“Rest,” Obi-wan says again. Anakin leans against him, shaking and bleeding and back in his arms, where he belongs. “Rest.”

“Stay,” he pleads. His voice is broken.

Obi-wan lowers the both of them to the ground, until Anakin is curled against his side, his head resting on his shoulder. He does not need to ask.

He will never lose him again.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, yeah, I’m writing more of this :)


End file.
